With the advent of Internet dating and online social networks women and men both are coming into contact with more random people to date. With the variety comes the problems. Since people you’re meeting aren’t always from your own general area you can fall prey to casual relationships. Casual relationships really don’t progress. They involve a low level of dating along with proverbial rolls in the hay.
Since people you meet may not come from your home town or work environment, there is a greater potential that they can slip in and out of your life quickly, easily, and emotionally unscathed. Not only that, people who virtually don’t know you can vanish quickly have far less incentive to be civil. It’s the nature of the beast. If you were to date someone online for a few months they may just quit talking to you and move on. Since they won’t run into you at the neighborhood coffee shop, work or reunion, they have less incentive to be humane. They’ll simply never see your face again. It’s as easy as cut (ignore phone calls and texts) and run (post new pictures of themselves and move on). The dating environment can be merciless.
Now that we know casual relationships are prevalent and that the Internet dating climate lends itself to casual relationship convenience, let’s talk about how to avoid becoming a casual relationship statistic. There are certain things a man will do ladies, that should set off the bells that he has literally no intention of getting serious. Before you ignore the signs and delude yourself, lets go over what they are. That way, if you accept a casual relationship you’ll be doing it with eyes wide open. If it is not what you want, you’ll know when to opt out.
No time for you
Ah the busy excuse. A man who repeatedly uses the busy excuse has to time for love. No time for love with you, that is. He has time. Everyone has time. What it comes down to is how they want to use it. I don’t care how many kids he has, what his commitments are, who his buddies are, and how much he travels for work. If he likes you he will find time for you. If he’s always busy and you’re always sitting by the phone wondering and waiting for a text message beep, your relationship is casual.
One trick men employ is to meter out their time with you. If they can only see you once every week or two it prevents closer bonding. That way he can drag the relationship out using the busy excuse and get his hooks in for the casual hookups he wants with you. Once you realize you’re getting used the relationship gets seedy real fast and will end.
By putting you on a time diet he can spread things out getting what he wants on occasion while giving you very little. He’s trying to get physical satisfaction while managing his time and involvement with you down. Guys are really good at this tactic. If he understands the players skills of getting you to miss and crave him then he can get away with murder. Pretty soon if he’s available at 10pm on a random night you’ll be jumping at a chance for alone time with him. Trust me that if he can rarely see you he can rarely see you because he only wants to rarely see you. Is he busy, busy, busy? Ding, ding, ding it’s a casual relationship.
No time for talk
If he’s running in and out of your china shop like a bull, it’s casual. If he doesn’t have time to talk to you on the phone every few days, it’s casual. If he texts you more than calls you, it’s casual. If he never texts you then it’s so casual that the relationship exists mainly in your head.
A man who is trying to keep things casual will avoid having cuddles and deep conversations like the plague. If he has no time for talk then he may as well leave a hundred dollar bill on your night table. If he’s running in and out of your place and little talking, dating or even hanging out is involved, it’s not serious nor will it ever be.
If he doesn’t hang out after nookie then its alarmingly casual. Men who aren’t interested in you for a relationship are not going to get sucked into intimate conversations about life with you. Reading between the lines? There won’t even be any lines to read between. If he avoids after-sex talk he is avoiding it for a reason and that reason is to avoid putting his foot in his mouth and blowing the good easy thing he has going.
If you’re assertive and have clear boundaries you’ll be able to pick up on a man’s intentions without having to confront him. Don’t mistake a no strings attached roll in the hay liaison with a relationship. Men always wish that women could just go endlessly in a casual fling with no expectations. But eventually, all women hope for something more committed. If you want to minimize the hurt from a casual situation, look for the signs. Then you can opt out if it’s not for you. The sooner you opt out of a no strings romance the less severe and long lasting the pain that you’ll suffer. Sure, you might miss out on some fun but it’s a trade-off. You need to know the difference between sex and love to make informed decisions.
He won’t buy anything
Men who don’t want to get serious will put you on a financial diet. No matter how broke he is, if he really likes you then he’ll spring for a piece of pizza. Flowers are the exception because men will buy cheap flowers to get what they want out of you. I’m talking about gifts, even small ones. A man that has no intention of being with you will skip over birthdays, Valentine’s days and the like.
If all he buys you are a few orchards or side of the road cheap flowers to get you into bed it’s casual. Casual guys won’t buy you anything personal or that requires a lot of thought because they aren’t thinking, and they don’t care. They also won’t spend on you because they want you to know in no uncertain terms what your relationship is about.
He runs from relationship talk
The minute you start talking about relationships or expectations, the casual guy will run like lightening. If you so much as dare cry and tell him you want more than your intermittent trysts you’ll find yourself getting ignored. A man that is only interested in a casual relationship will not talk about relationships unless it’s to radically reject one with you. The minute you bring it up he’ll take a hiatus and ditch you. If you drop your expectations down to nothing, he’ll come back around. He’ll use you for intimacy and float in and out of your life as long as you allow it. He’ll act like a dangling chad because, he is a dangling chad (whatever that is).
Things get crusty
No matter what the chemistry between the two of you, things will eventually get crusty if you realize you’re getting played. Once the gig is up and you know he’s not going to go deeper, the physical component will get a more seedy feel to it. When that happens, the butterflies go away and you start to see things without your rose colored glasses. You might still like him but now you’re starting to hurt.
He keeps looking
Don’t downplay the fact that he is still online, posts new pictures, or flat out tells you he’s too this or that to commit. All of that stuff means his foot is half out the door and he is open to dating others. Not only is he open to it, he may well be actively doing it. Women will make a billion excuses for men’s bad behavior. Not even the men could dream up the excuses a woman who likes him will make for him.
Men that are with you, even if casually, are going to be a little lazier about the hunt. So ladies you might think oh his profile is online but he’s hanging out with me, no big deal. Wrong. He may be lazy about looking because he has nooky from you but the fact that his sign is still out as single should tell you something. The second someone tantalizing crosses his path he will drop you like a hot potato.
Even if he’s lazy about looking (because he’s casually with you) if he’s looking at all, that means he’s looking. Don’t downplay it. Some men may even want you to know they are looking so that you don’t have any expectations. While you’re doing back bends trying to impress him so that he stays off his Internet dating account, he’s laughing. He might get lazy about looking but you’re always going to intuitively feel that he has one eye on the door. If you feel insecure and jealous with him it can be for valid reasons. Always rely on and trust your gut instinct.
If you’re desperately jumping through hoops to distract him from logging onto the dating site, it won’t work to create attraction in him. He’s still going to log in. You can’t lure a guy away from being on the hunt or tell him what to do. He has to remove himself off the Internet because he wants to see you. Most guys have a booty call or casual partner at any given time. You need to be able to know if you are her. Casual relationships might fill some sort of emotional gap for a while but there are many repercussions and downfalls to getting sucked into one. You can wind up hurting for far longer than you were made to feel good.
The physical love and warm body may not be worth getting you heart obliterated if you fall in love with a man that’s not interested in you that way. If you do fall in love and get hurt, he is not likely to care. He figures you’re an adult, you knew what you were getting into, he never made any promises, and you should have seen the signs. If there was writing on the wall and he put it there and you still get hurt because you stupidly fell in love, a man is not going to lose any sleep over it. He’ll think you’re stupid, that’s it.
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